Sunday, April 26, 2015

G. K Chesterton,
an English journalist and writer of the early twentieth century and author of
the Father Brown mysteries, wrote that art is what people do with their
limitations.In Flagstaff that means the art of gardening is
what gardeners do with the scarcity of water.Unfortunately, the word “xeriscape” has a harsh ring to it, indicating
bans and curbs rather than opportunities and possibilities. Actually, xeriscape simply means dry landscape
or a garden congenial to CoconinoCounty and the Colorado
Plateau, a simpatico for the sere of
the Southwest.

The
real issue is the means to lush, beautiful gardens on less water than a tropical
excess.Indeed, excess is a threat to a water
budget.Also, excess is bad taste.As the poet Robert Browning’s pointed out in
his poem Andrea de Sarto, “Less is
more.”The opportunity for Flagstaff gardeners is
how to spend less and have more beauty.It
takes imagination!

Happily,
God has given us imagination and the Mexican feather

grass Nasella tenuissima,) a gardener’s
delight.Its leaves are so fine that
they sometimes tangle, but sadly not a tangle with which to dally.Yielding to a breeze with the grace of a
ballet dancer it does a light fandango with castanets and in triple time in a
good wind, a blessing which Flagstaff
has in excess.Its tall (2ft to 3ft),
light green set amongst the lower blue green of a blue fescue (Festuca ovina ‘Glauca’) make an
beguiling accompaniment to a small cluster of bearded iris (Iris germanica).As in all forms of art, gardening, especially
landscaping is compare and contrast.

All
of these survive, even prevail, on budgeted water, needing water only during
dry spells.The blue fescue gets even
bluer with less water.The voluptuous
blooms of the bearded iris are one of the few beauties of the world who
flourish on benign neglect and low maintenance.Of course, benign neglect doesn’t mean abuse.They need some water and appropriate
nutrients.

The
word “iris” is a Greek word meaning “rainbow” or metaphorically “halo.”John of the Apocalypse wrote a lovely verse
using iris, “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped
in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and
his legs pillars of fire (10:1.)”The
setting reads like a thunderstorm over the peaks with flashes of lightning, a
rainbow threading it was way in and out of a virga, and the brilliance of the
sun blazing through gaps in the clouds.All of the colors in that scene can be found in irides (plural of iris) whose
beauty can become, as the Book of Common Prayer reads, “an outward and visible
sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”

Perennial
grasses are available for gardeners on a water budget.Unless a lawn serves as a playing field, a
golf course, or a place for children’s play, grasses suitable for the Southwest
offer an intriguing texture.Creeping
red fescue (Festuca ruba), a
finely-textured, dark green grass, does well out of the sun, forming lazy
whorls in the shade.Sheep fescue (Festuca ovina), a dark green, lies flat
and in mounds in various patterns and needs mowing with a weed-whacker once a
year.Both of these need only 12 inches
of rain annually.Flagstaff’s annual rainfall is slightly less
than 24 inches.

Many bulbs and
rhizomes love gardens on a water budget.A lushly xeriscaped garden can have color spring, summer, and fall.Beginning with Wordsworth’s “fluttering and
dancing daffodils” (Narcissus) and
tulips (Tulipa) in late winter and early spring, the list continues through the
bearded iris and the western blue flag (Iris
missouriensis) and perennials such as the firewheel (Gaillardiapulchella),
blanket flower (Gaillardia aristata)
and various penstemon such as the Red Rock penstemon (Keckiellacorymbosa) and
theRocky Mountain penstemon (Penstemon strictus).The drought tolerant geranium-leaf larkspur (Delphinium geraniifolium) is a
long-blooming perennial as is the Russian sage (Perovskia atriplocfolia) and that old favorite of country gardens,
the hollyhock (Althaea rosea).A resource is Janice Busco and Nancy R.
Morin’s Native Plants for High-ElevationWesternGardens.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Question:Dear Answer Man, it’s Abigail here once again.It’s about my husband Rusty.He claims he’s “a meat and potatoes kinda
guy,” which means, I think, that he doesn’t like vegetables.He’s got the idea that because he lives in Flagstaff he’s a
frontiersman, some kind of pioneer.He doesn’t
even wear a cowboy hat, instead, it’s a ball cap turned backwards.He doesn’t own a horse and works on diesel
engines.About the only thing that makes
him an authentic frontiersman is that he takes his coffee black, he keeps his
hat on when he eats, and his teeth are brown from the coffee.

Answer: Howdy, Abigail, does he like sardines? Canned sardines were the staple diet of the
cowboys in the late 1800’s!You might
set out a spread of canned sardines and saltines, telling him that sardines are
what makes a cowboy.

Question:I couldn’t get him into sardines.He hates fish although he likes fish
tacos.I think it’s the fat and the breading
that he likes, plus the crunch of corn tortilla.He loves fried chips.Also, he’s gotten into politics.He’s against immigration.

Answer:Well, there you have it.If he doesn’t eat his vegetables, his brain’ll
go dead on him.The best way to
straighten out Rusty’s politics is to get him to eat his vegetables plus fish.There’s no point in persuasion.Sometimes people’s brains get locked up from
lack of vegetable lubrication.It’s best
just to feed his brain.

It took
immigration to add tacos to our menus.Does he want to deport fish tacos back to Mexico?Does he do Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and
Thai?How about French, Italian,
Armenian, or Greek?

There are three
kinds of vegetables that help send blood to the brain to make it work better.Surreptitiously, add some fish oil capsules
to his food, like tuck one in a taco.

Kale, Swiss chard,
and spinach are three of the most nutritious vegetables, and they’re the
easiest to grow.TIME magazine even
listed them amongst the 50 most healthful vegetables.You could even slip them in his fish tacos.

Question:Okay, so I’ll sneak fish oil capsules in his
tacos.I do that for our two labs
already.It sure makes their coats sleek
and shiny.I don’t know that they’ll
help Rusty’s hair.What’s left, he
shaves so that without his baseball cap he looks like a cue ball.He says that it’s the style among “real
men.”I told him that they looked like billiards.

Please, give me
some directions on kale, Swiss chard, and spinach.

Answer:They are easy to grow and tolerant to cold
weather. Kale even tastes after a light
freeze.Sometimes, Swiss chard survives
the freezes of winter, coming up again in the spring.

First, prepare the
soil with compost.It needs to be
friable, like flowing through your fingers.Next, use a balanced fertilizer that’s rich in nitrogen.These are all leafy vegetables and need
nitrogen.With leafy vegetables, the
plant, not the fruit, is eaten, and nitrogen’s good for the growth of the
plants themselves.

These are all cool
season vegetables so they do well in Flagstaff.
The seeds can be sown about a month
before the last freeze which statistically comes around June 15.They should be sown about ½ deep, three to
four inches apart, and then thinned for maximum growth. They can all be sown
successively through the summer and even into early fall.

There are several
varieties of kale, Swiss chard, and spinach.Swiss chard offers the widest varieties in terms of color, especially a
lovely red called Vulcan.Kale offers
many varieties, especially in texture: the Tuscan with a long leaf, Russian
with a broad leaf which turns red, and Scotch which is frilly.Probably the most popular of the spinach
varieties is baby spinach.So have at
it!

Question:I’ll let you know.The secret as far as Rusty’s concerned is
deception, slipping them in his fish tacos unawares.He won’t eat them otherwise.I’ll let you know later about deporting fish tacos
back to Mexico.

Monday, April 13, 2015

He swept into Flagstaff’s
fall 2007 master gardener class, a robust figure clad in a midnight blue cloak
reminiscent of robes sported by the Judiciary of England and Wales. Silvery
gray hair spilled out from under his dark beret adorned with a Celtic knot
badge. He was introduced to the class as
Dr. Dana Prom Smith, writer and editor of the Master Gardener column for the Arizona
Daily Sun. “I need articles for the column!” he said enthusiastically, as
he scanned the room full of master gardener hopefuls with his Nordic blue eyes.
He provided two guidelines: 685 words on topics related to Flagstaff gardening, and a willingness to
have one’s work edited. As he exited the classroom, 60 captivated eyes followed
him, his attire swirling out the door. I’d never seen anyone quite like him,
even during my undergrad years in Boston
in the 1970’s. Who was this mysterious sage in our midst? And why that outfit?

Since June 2005, Dana – officially, The
Rev. Dana
Prom Smith,
S.T.D., Ph.D. - has
written and edited the Daily Sun’s
gardening column, providing tips for gardeners new, and not so new, to Northern Arizona. He’s a relentless scribe of high
country cultivation, and of life, weaving tales of tomatoes and onions with his
adventures as a young Army counter-intelligence soldier during World War II,
his experience as a psychotherapist, his knowledge as a writer, and his
insights as a Presbyterian minister. He suffers no fools, yet is most gracious
with budding literary artists sincere in improving their craft. He also
volunteers at the LiteracyCenter in Flagstaff,
teaching individually five adults and one child English as a second language.

Once a month I’ve the distinct pleasure of joining Dana,
and on occasion, his vivacious wife and jewelry artist, Gretchen, for lunch to
discuss Gardening, Etc. These
get-togethers are always fun and productive, as we consider different topics,
tally articles we have “ahead” for the column, brainstorm ideas to keep the
column fresh and relevant, and share feedback from our readers. Last year,
during lunch at Simply Delicious Café, Dana told me, “You know, Freddi, I’ll be
90 in three years.” I smiled, and said, “And?” I knew what he was getting at,
that he was practically a nonagenarian, at least by the calendar. His agility,
keen intellect and positive spirit make it a challenge to believe that he was a
toddler when the stock market crashed in 1929. It was during this conversation
that I agreed to be Dana’s co-editor. Writing as much as he does, possibly more
than 50% of Gardening, Etc.’s weekly
articles, plus editorial duties, I was happy to do it.

How did Flagstaff’s
“renaissance man” get his start growing veggies? “I started gardening with my
father when I was five years old,” he wrote me recently. “I harvested snails. I
loved it. I grew up in Southern California.
There were lots of snails every morning, especially in a lush garden.” When
asked what his favorite crop was, he replied without hesitation: “Haricot
vert.” Haricot vert, or French green bean, isn’t just any bean. It’s longer,
more slender and considered by the Food Network experts to be tastier than
other, more pedestrian green beans. And his remarkable ensemble? It turns out
that it is less a fashion statement, and more a matter of comfort. After
receiving a serious back injury from a flare during WWII, requiring successive
surgeries throughout the years, Dana advised, “It is painful to wear a belt…The
kaftans are comfortable.” The beret is, as he put it, “…convenient.”

When I got home that fateful night in 2007, I was so
jazzed by Dana’s unexpected writing invitation that I stayed up way past my
“ranger bedtime” of 9 p.m., to pen a draft about wind scorpions, a
much-maligned creature found in Flagstaff,
for his column. The rest is history, as “Mysterious Gift from the Garden” was
published in early 2008. As we prepare for our next meeting, I fervently hope
that Dana continues to defy Father Time, and keep writing the wonderful stories
that only he can do.He turned 88 a few
days ago.

Saturday, April 04, 2015

When
first I met her, she was trembling, agitated, and terrified.Her husband wasn’t unable to reassure
her.They’d been stopped by a California
Highway Motorcycle Patrolman on the Ventura Freeway on their way to my office.

The
patrol officer pulled them over because the man hadn’t signaled a lane
change.Black polished, knee-high boots,
jodhpurs, a jacket, helmet, and dark glasses, the officer walked to the back of
the man’s car and asked him to turn on his turn signals.The left turn signal wasn’t operating.

The
officer said, “I could tell that you were a responsible driver from the way you
handled your vehicle.When you didn’t
signal a lane change, I though your turn signal wasn’t operating.I won’t write you up to get the defect
repaired.Just get it fixed.Have a good day and drive safely.”

The
woman had escaped a Nazi concentration camp when she was fifteen.Her family had been killed.She came to America an orphan.He was born and raised in Chicago, had become a successful accountant,
was a Cubs fan, and had moved to Sherman Oaks to retire.They were both active members of a synagogue
and devout Jews.The man knew that he
hadn’t done anything illegal and was curious, calm, and thought the officer
courteous.As soon as she saw in the
side mirror the black boots, jodhpurs, and helmet, she thought pogrom,
persecution, holocaust, and death camps.For her the police were a terror, for him a reassurance.A lovely woman, there was always
tentativeness with her, a caution bordering on suspicion.

Think
of an adolescent spending six months in the terrors of combat.

Our
histories shape the way we perceive our experiences.Even our black lab, Petite, who had been
severely abused before we adopted her, views large male strangers with fear and
hostility, barking and then running upstairs.After a year of love and affection, she is a little less fearful and
skittish, but not completely.The
admonition, “Get over it,” is an insult.

During
the Graeco-Roman times and all through the Middle Ages up to Nathaniel
Hawthorne, the countryside and the forest were seen as places of danger.The city was the place of safety.Our words “heathen” and “pagan” originally
referred to people who lived in the hinterlands.Saint
Augustine (354-430) called his great theological
treatise, DeCivitateDei (The City of
God.)Now, people speak vacuously of “a
cathedral of pines.”Attitudes have
changed a bit.People are prone to
wander out in nature to find themselves while riots, murders, and mayhem are
products of the city.

A
garden is essentially a cultivated forest in the city, a place of safety where
we communicate with the tangible while our spirits soar.The Book of Common Prayer has a particularly
felicitous way of putting it: “an outward and visible sign of an inward and
spiritual grace.”While referring to the
water, wine, and bread of the sacraments, it doesn’t restrict the “outward and
visible signs” of God’s presence from the experiences in a garden, the feel of
soil drifting through one’s fingers, the sweet smell of a rose, the astringent
aroma of the pines,the flavor of a
tomato, the elemental quality of the whole thing.

We
don’t get out bearings through the frivolous or the ephemeral.Our touches of divinity are in the
elemental.Without such an experience we’re
disconnected from ourselves, as though we are strangers within our own
skin.Gardening is not an option for
spiritual welfare.It is essential.With spring approaching, it’s time to get a
shovel, a rake, a trowel, and a hoe, the basic tools of our spiritual welfare.

First,
there’s the cleanup, getting rid of all the debris and trash clogging our lives.Then, there’s preparing the soil as in getting
our values right, values that enhance rather than undermine our welfare.Next, we plant the right stuff.After that we nourish ourselves, and, finally,
we bear fruit and beauty.

What
better way to get it right than with those “outward and visible signs of an inward
and spiritual grace” in a garden!

In
Eugene O’Neil’s TheIcemanCometh, the fantasy of salvation of some sort, some political, some
economic, and some religious, runs throughout the play.The scene is a bar in Greenwich
Village peopled by drunks and a few prostitutes with the promise
of the coming ice man.A similar fantasy
runs through the politics in Arizona
only this time it is the Ice Cream Man Who Cometh, promising salvation through
deprivation, a deprivation of public education by means of financial
starvation.The theme seems to be that
the fantasy of ignorance will produce prosperity for the corporations.

While
nearly everyone else in the country wants to strengthen education, the
Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey,
the ICE CREAM MAN, and the Republican controlled legislature want to reduce education
in Arizona in a race with Mississippi to last place.Of course, all the while these prosperous
corporations are on government welfare with tax breaks.Their purpose appears to be a society and
haves and have-nots.

It
is all reminiscent of the French Revolution and the Queen, Marie Antoinette, to
whom is attributed the famous phrase, “let them eat cake” upon hearing of the
starvation of the peasants who had no bread.The governor’s Lenten message of denial has no promise of an Easter
resurrection to the schools, only the dismissal of “let them eat ice cream.”